Uomini-statua-oggetto

Philip Wiegard

On occasion of an exhibition held at Galleria Furini Arte Contemporanea in Rome, German artist Philip Wiegard carried out a personal reinterpretation of Giorgio de Chirico’s work and of the artist’s Roman apartment in the piece entitledUomini-Statua-Oggetto (men-statue-object). Inspired by a visit to the House-museum, the artist staged an intimate, Baroque-style arrangement of interior decor within the rooms of the Gallery. By making use of typical dechirican visual-perspective mechanisms, Wiegard transformed every-day objects such as tables, chairs and armchairs, creating settings where inside is outside, what seems near is in fact far, and that which appears deep is actually flat. Wiegard’s photographs of the rooms and paintings at the House-museum, take on a new life in his installation where they are perspectively re-constructed in an ambiguous play on reality and fantasy. By applying the rules of perspective common to painting, these three dimensional objects are emptied of their volumes, robbed of their original function and made into hybrid elements, somewhere between the object and the image, capable of generating doubt in the observer’s perception.